Diplomats meet to try and save Ukraine peace summit

Foreign ministers from France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia were meeting Monday in Berlin to try and resolve tensions threatening to scupper a planned summit on ending the Ukrainian conflict.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko hopes that a presidential summit of the four countries can take place Thursday in Kazakhstan with the goal of signing a peace document with Russia.

The deal would commit Ukraine and Russia to implement fully a peace accord already signed in September but which pro-Russian separatist guerrillas and Ukrainian forces have violated repeatedly in a war that has already killed more than 4,700 people.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel informed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Poroshenko over the weekend that the peace summit was pointless as long as a truce was not respected. France, which is the other major European broker in Ukraine peace negotiations, expressed similar reservations.

"We have not reached a point where we can say it is politically useful to have such a meeting," German foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said on Monday.

Both sides in Ukraine accuse each other of being at fault for the impasse.

The rebel stronghold of Donetsk -- a once bustling city of nearly a million that now stands half vacant and suffers chronic power and water shortages -- has been shaken by heavy artillery fire in the past week.

The Ukrainian government accuses the insurgents of escalating attacks to scuttle implementation of the September peace settlement. This would include forcing Russia to return control to Ukraine of a long section of border, inflicting a severe blow to the Russian-backed rebels' logistics.

And illustrating the severity of the security situation, a partial power outage on Sunday in Donetsk left more than 300 miners trapped one of Europe's largest coal mines for several hours with limited oxygen supplies.

- Mutual need for peace -

Yet both Putin and Poroshenko are under pressure to cut a deal to end the rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

The war erupted last year shortly after crowds in Kiev overturned the country's Moscow-backed president. Russia then annexed the southern province of Crimea and insurgents in the east began their uprising.

Many Ukrainians want Poroshenko to restore control over the whole country, but the Ukrainian army is in tatters after years of underfunding and corruption.

The war is also draining what little remains of Ukraine's financial resources at the same time as the country tries to embark on tough internationally-backed economic reforms.

Putin -- his personal approval soaring but his country's economy shrinking for the first time since 2009 -- needs to scale down support for the pro-Russian insurgents in order to persuade the United States and EU governments to ease off on sanctions.

The most painful measures deprive Russia's most powerful banks and energy producers from borrowing money for more than 90 days on US and EU markets. This has left indebted firms dependent on rescues from a Russia government that has seen its own budget revenues shrink.

Russia's central bank on Monday reported spending $76 billion last year in its eventually-abandoned effort to save the ruble from losing half its value against major foreign currencies.

Russia's international reserves have slipped below $400 million for the first time in five years. Moscow also has nearly $170 billion saved up in two oil wealth funds and few analysts expect the country to run out of cash the way Ukraine has this year.

Some Europeans have expressed alarm over the potential security risks posed by the nuclear superpower's economic troubles.

"I think the sanctions must stop now. They must be lifted if there is progress," French President Francois Hollande said last week.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted Monday that Moscow's Ukraine policy would not depend on Western pressure.

"We were not the ones who got the sanctions ball rolling," Lavrov said before departing for Berlin. "This is their problem."